Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart
“That was hell…. that was miserable,” those were their words following their release after spending 36 years in prison for a crime they did not commit.
Chestnut, Watkins, and Stewart were arrested on Thanksgiving in 1983 and accused of killing 14-year-old Dewitt Duckett.
Thirty-six years after they were convicted, a judge in Baltimore has cleared them and all charges against them dropped after authorities say they were wrongfully sentenced for the murder.
They were teenagers when they were sentenced to life in prison in 1984. Chestnut and Watkins were 16 at the time of their arrest and Stewart was 17, CNN reports. They are now in their early 50s preparing to experience adulthood on the outside for the first time.
A re-investigation earlier this year brought forth new evidence and testimony from witnesses that proved their innocence, reports WJZ CBS Baltimore.
The Baltimore Conviction Integrity Unit reopened the investigation and worked with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and the University of Baltimore Innocence Project after Chestnut contacted the CIU to say all three were innocent.
The Washington Post reported Chestnut included exculpatory evidence he uncovered last year.
According to investigators, they found new evidence and testimony from four witnesses who have since recanted, saying they were pressured by police into changing their statement – that pointed the finger at a different man.
